Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/172228 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
Upjohn Institute Working Paper No. 17-266
Publisher: 
W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, Kalamazoo, MI
Abstract: 
We extend the task-based empirical framework used in the job polarization literature to analyze the susceptibility of low-wage employment to technological substitution. We find that increases in the cost of low-wage labor, via minimum wage hikes, lead to relative employment declines at cognitively routine occupations but not manually-routine or non-routine low-wage occupations. This suggests that low-wage routine cognitive tasks are susceptible to technological substitution. While the short-run employment consequence of this reshuffling on individual workers is economically small, due to concurrent employment growth in other low-wage jobs, workers previously employed in cognitively routine jobs experience relative wage losses.
Subjects: 
technological substitution
routine tasks
minimum wage
JEL: 
J24
J38
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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